Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 17.6 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, March 10, 2022. 20:00.

Chapter 17. The Play of the Cosmic Powers-6.

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In our faiths, in our beliefs, we are either tamasika, or rajasika or sattvika. We may have the faith of an animal or the faith of a highly prejudiced person, or the faith of one who is enlightened and has a direct grasp of truth by an intuition of the nature of things. This belief, this faith, decides practically everything we do in this world. Our political life, our social relationships, our personal conduct, our religious practices, even our idea of God and the aim of life—all these are determined by the kind of guna that operates in us, in any measure. If we are tamasika, lowest in the rung of evolution, we have the world view of an animal, which, too, has a philosophy of its own, according to which it works. We can think like insects, reptiles, lions and tigers, or we can think of the world from a point of view which today we sometimes call humanitarian, or we can think in a divine way which surpasses all human judgements.

It is this background upon which the Seventeenth Chapter is based, which describes three types of faith that propel the conduct and the activity of people in the world. The food that we eat, the way in which we speak, the kind of relationship that we maintain with others, the religious practices in which we engage ourselves, are all rooted in, and defined by the belief or faith that we entertain as a philosophy of our lives. Suffice it to say that it is up to us to move from tamas to rajas, and from rajas to sattva, and put forth effort to transform ourselves into diviner beings rising above even the human level of understanding. Each one is a judge for one's own self. We know where we stand, with some exercise of good reason. By a measure of sensible impersonality and discriminative effort, we will be able to decide the stage in which we are.

Any kind of retributive or animalistic behaviour where values are wrested out of things and centred in one's own self, where people and objects of the world are treated as nothings in comparison with one's self, where we become the sole standard of judgement and everyone else a tool to ourselves, where such is the outlook of our life, we can imagine that tamas is predominant in us. When we want to exploit the world for the satisfaction of our own so-called outlook of life, we are in tamas. When we give equal value to others as we give to ourselves, we are on a higher level of human appreciation. We do not feel it proper for us, then, to transform everything into an instrument for our satisfaction. We become humanistic, charitable, sociable, polite and good-natured.

But when we rise higher still to the diviner level where sattva predominates, we do not regard others as ‘others' at all. They are not others, they are just one being appearing in this multifaceted form of ourselves and others; for in the divine level there are no objects. There are only subjects appearing in all forms. In the animal level it is purely the objectivity of things that is taken into consideration. In the human level the subject and the object are taken on a par, as on an equal footing. In the divine level the distinction between the subject and the object is transcended, and everyone reflects everyone else. This is the spiritual realm of Truth, the golden age, or the millennium that people speak of and hope to see with their eyes. When dharma prevails and reigns supreme in the world, where governments are not necessary, when there is no necessity for external mandate or compulsive rule, when everyone reflects truth wholly in oneself, when everyone reflects everyone else as if mirrors are placed one in front of the other, such is the divine realm of  Brahma-loka, the Kingdom of God, which is within everyone. This is the world of sattva, utter purity.

Towards the end of the Seventeenth Chapter we are given the cryptic message of ‘Om Tat Sat', a term with which we are all familiar, but the meaning of which is not always so clear. It is said that this is a very holy expression and it has to be employed in every religious performance. We conclude all pious acts with the utterance  Om Tat Sat, which appears to be an invocation of God at the end of a performance. The meaning of these words is not clear, and no commentary on the Gita will perhaps be an aid to us in understanding what these three terms actually signify. We merely say  Om Tat Sat. We do not know what it means.

Well, we may go a little deep into its significance from the point of view of the Bhagavadgita itself, in the light of the great message that has been given to us through its various chapters. And in this light if we look at these terms, it would appear that the three seeds, Om,  Tat, and  Sat signify the total comprehensiveness of the nature of Brahman, ranging beyond the concepts of Reality in the form of transcendence and immanence.

Generally, a remote thing is referred to as Tat, in the Sanskrit language. ‘That' is  Tat. We refer to God as  Tat,  It, etc., as a super-transcendent inaccessible something.  Sat is the very same transcendent Reality that is hidden and present as the Divine immanence in all things. God is transcendent and also immanent. He is above us; He is also within us. He is far, and he is near; he is outside, and he is inside. Now, these ideas of transcendence and immanence— Tat Sat, the notions of God being outside as well as inside— are also to be transcended in a larger grasp, which is Om.

Here, in this mystical significance of the well-known symbol of Om, we are given a further transcendence of both the transcendent aspect and the immanent aspect of the Absolute. It is, in the language of the Upanishad, the  Bhuma, or the Plenum, the completeness whereby we cannot look upon it either as something above us or as something within us. To that supreme completeness, there are no outward and inward differences. There is no such thing as going above and being within, because it is everywhere, at all times, without the limitations of space, time and objectivity. Such an incomprehensible significance is embedded in this mystical formula of  Om. Naturally, it is a holy expression, which is unutterable, beyond understanding but signifying everything that is blessed and supreme. Such is  Om, which grasps within itself all that is real everywhere, the transcendent and the immanent.

So, God is all, the Absolute is everything. The invocation of this Symbol, Om Tat Sat, in our experience, in our own consciousness, a remembrance of it at the sacred conclusion of any kind of performance, religious or otherwise, is regarded as a completion of that performance. God completes everything, and everything is incomplete where God is absent. The only thing that is full is God, and so He has to be invoked always.

End.

Next : Chapter-18 The Yoga of the Liberation of Spirit.

To be continued ....

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